[b_sharp]

"Common usage will prevail."

Not in a scientific context it won't.

The precision needed in science is lost when the word is used as part of common language.

[editor-surveyor]

What would an evolution believer know of science?

[bvw]

Precision? If you want precision change your name to "4151.8828125 Hertz". No, with some words and term preciseness counts. For example "femur" rather than "leg bone". With words such as "theory" or "evolution" such precision is folly. As foolish as demanding that your gas station meter the pumped gas to the nano-liter.

[bvw]

Ifaic, people DID take language seriously and were more precise in days when sentence diagrams and parts of speech were expected to be known BEFORE one went to High School.

Say in 1828. And here's a Merriam Webster definition from 1828:

THE'ORY, n. [L. theoria; Gr. to see or contemplate.]

1. Speculation; a doctrine or scheme of things, which terminates in speculation or contemplation, without a view to practice. It is here taken in an unfavorable sense, as implying something visionary.

2. An exposition of the general principles of any science; as the theory of music.

3. The science distinguished from the art; as the theory and practice of medicine.

4. The philosophical explanation of phenomena, either physical or moral; as Lavoisier's theory of combustion; Smith's theory of moral sentiments.

Theory is distinguished from hypothesis thus; a theory is founded on inferences drawn from principles which have been established on independent evidence; a hypothesis is a proposition assumed to account for certain phenomena, and has no other evidence of its truth, than that it affords a satisfactory explanation of those phenomena.

That number 4 item -- that IS scientific. Today? Don't think so, science has no way with genuine precision -- that mission is a poor stepsister to tenured and peer-pecked orthodoxy.

(Dear Coyoteman Field work is fun especially if one has a flask of good whiskey for the first breakfast's shot of liquid heat.)

[Mamzelle]

re: Not in a scientific context it won't.)))

This is not a scientific context, and there're precious few scientists involved in this online discussion forum--what scientists I have known are not bossy, obsessive internet nags carrying water for a sneaky, cowardly overlord.

You can carp and squawk and be condescending, but you're still the equal of any other freeper and can't force others to bow to terms that you'd like to set. No white coat halos for evos.

[Old Professer]

My favorite science words are: elegant, robust, significant, and 'needs more study.'